The government is preparing a major publicity campaign to promote the planned introduction of a new carbon cap-and-trade scheme that will impact over 5,000 UK organisations from 2010.

Speaking at the Corporate Climate Response (CRC) conference in London, environment minister Phil Woolas said that the government would roll out a major "information and awareness campaign" before the end of the year designed to raise awareness of the legislation and ensure public and private sector managers are well prepared for its introduction.

"Although two years may seem like it is a long way off, in business planning terms it is not," he said, adding that the extension of mandatory carbon trading to impact "mid-sized organisations", including hotels, supermarkets, hospitals and Whitehall departments, would force "carbon management" principles into many organisations for the first time, affecting "hundreds of thousands of employees and millions of customers".

The upcoming awareness campaign is expected to be followed in early 2009 by a major Defra programme to identify which organisations use over 6,000MW of electricity a year - roughly equivalent to electricity bills of over £500,000 - and as such are legally obliged to enter the CRC. "Every half hourly meter in the country will be written to as part of a reconciliation process to determine whether it is above the threshold or not," explained Ray Gluckman of consultancy Enviros, which is working with Defra on the implementation of the scheme.

Woolas advised however that there was not a huge amount execs could do currently to prepare for the CRC as the government is still trying to "put the jigsaw together" and finalise the legislation.

But other speakers at the event advised that firms could and should act early to prepare for the CRC by recording and reporting their energy use and instigating strategies to enhance energy efficiency.

Defra is currently requiring larger firms to assess their electricity use for calendar year 2008 in readiness for those firms that qualify for the scheme to formally report their electricity use data in 2009. In addition, Jim Butler, head of marketing strategy at energy giant EDF, said that "early birds" would prove the "winners" under the CRC. "Those sites that will win will be well organised with their data, will know whether they are in or outside the scheme, and are planning now," he added.

Officials from Defra also confirmed that many energy saving measures undertaken now will be accounted for when organisations' energy performance is assessed under the CRC.